enhancement: SERVE-EVENTS uses the poll() system call in lieu of select() if the OS has the former. Previously poll() was used only if waiting on exactly one file descriptor.

enhancement: efficiency of access to untagged structure slots is improved on x86-64, and the order of slots in memory is exactly as specified by defstruct, simplifying use of structures as arguments to foreign calls.

bug fix: SB-DEBUG:ARG now works in all TRACE options which evaluate forms. (lp#1357826)

Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is an open source, multiplatform and free development environment, a high performance compiler for the ANSI standard Common Lisp programming language. It is written entirely in the Lisp programming language and tailored specifically for developers.

Features at a glance

Key features include excellent support for garbage collection, built-in powerful macros, support for lexical closures, strong dynamic typing implementation, as well as incremental compilation capabilities.

The software also includes numerous extensions, such as native threads, socket support, a statistical profiler, programmable streams, and many others. All these extension are available through an interactive and integrated native compiler, which feels like an interpreter.

If you’re looking for detailed information about how to install Steel Bank Common Lisp on your Linux distro or how to use it, do not hesitate to check out the project’s homepage (see link at the end of the article).

Getting started with Steel Bank Common Lisp

To use Steel Bank Common Lisp on your GNU/Linux distribution, simply download the pre-built binary package engineered for 64-bit hardware platforms, save it on a location of your choice, unpack it and open a terminal emulator application.

In the Terminal app, run the ‘sh run-sbcl.sh’ command to access its command prompt, where you will be able to type the HELP command to view detailed information about available options and learn how to use the compiler.

Supported operating systems and availability

Steel Bank Common Lisp is unique in being a cross-platform native Common Lisp compiler, which works on GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, bootstraping itself completely from source.

For your convenience, besides the universal source tarball, the software is distributed as a pre-built binary package that allows you to use Steel Bank Common Lisp without installing it on 64-bit (x86_64) computers.

Steel Bank Common Lisp was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on December 9th, 2014